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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Off and Running with Dr. Seuss

Our Seuss week is off and running. It was a rocky start, but we're finally on a roll. I was scheduled for jury duty, so I planned activities that didn't require a lot of extra work for my assistant and sub. I found out I had been excused after everything was set. One of the small group activities was to make a class counting book like "Ten Apples Up On Top". The kids used a "people craft stick" to trace, then decorate and put the appropriate number of fingerprint "apples" on the figure's head.

Not a bad literacy activity.....EXCEPT....I'd forgotten we'd made the same book in September for apple week! Ugghh!

I usually decorate our class door with a Cat In The Hat outline that the children cut out and decorate. This year, I made stencils from old file folders for the Cat's face and gave them small squares of red and white construction paper to make hats from. The funniest thing was I used a very wide marker to outline the stencil to help guide them. Several of my friends wanted to "help" me and cut off the black part they thought I'd forgotten to cut off! Don't you just love helpful? I get a kick out of how they are always trying to be one step ahead!

I love the faces on these!

Several weeks ago, I was showing a few friends how to put a little pastel colored chalk on the cheeks of people and rub it a little to make rosy cheeks. One of my guys said he had to make some cheeks and got out the chalk.

Math Fun
I made these fish cards for 1 Fish, 2 Fish Red Fish, Blue Fish. I'll feature pics later of the red and blue fish with the upper and lowercase alphabet on them. This set features the numeral, dots, or the number word.

I made these fishbowl math mats from recycled binder covers. I read about this idea last year to recycle old binders by cutting off the sides. I frequently make math mats to correspond with our themes, but we don't have a big school laminator and sending out items for lamination is costly. I usually use contact paper to provide some sturdiness, but the mats don't last very long. I just slipped the mats, or fishbowl cut out in this case, into the binder cover and viola! a sturdy math mat! The children took turns rolling the dice and placed fish on their fishbowl.

Literacy Fun
We've been practicing making words and Dr. Seuss makes this a lot of fun. The kids feel free to be silly with words just like the master! We've been making words in large and small groups.

Our puppet theater has a couple of new friends. I think these were Christmas stockings at one time, but the kids discovered these Cat in the Hats and have been using them as puppets. Who am I to tell them differently?

Tomorrow we celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday. We plan to read Wacky Wednesday, the Foot Book and Fox in Socks and wear our wackiest socks with Seuss hats we made. We'll also participate in "Read Across America". Our fun will continue all week. We'll try to read as many Seuss books as we can. I think even if we read all week, we'd never get them all read, but it will be fun to see how many we do read. On Friday, we'll make green eggs and ham. And guess what we'll read?

Thanks, Ms. Jessi! I was really upset that they picked me THIS week of all weeks! The potential for missing out on too many fun activities would have been awful! I was very glad to get excused this time. I had to revamp some of our plans for the week now that I know I'll be there the whole week, but I think it will be worth the effort! :)

This looks like a lot of fun! I'm getting ready for Ms. Amy to be "out for the day" as Thing One will be greeting the children tomorrow morning :). We have a fun filled day with Green Eggs and Ham tomorrow too.

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About Me

I have been teaching early childhood for about 20 years. I love what I do---it's the best job in the world!!! Where else can you go to work each day and do art, play games, have snack and get hugs regularly AND get paid for it?! I love to share ideas with other teachers and see what they are doing in their classrooms. Teaching is the best profession---we love to share!